Fruit Salads and Black Jacks.
Or
Becoming like a Little Child.
Fruit Salads and Black Jacks, small wrapped sweeties. I used to buy them from the Tuck Shop at the Middle School where I passed in educational tedium the years 11 – 14. The tuck shop opened at lunch time from a hatch in the hall once the canteen had closed. It was run by a teacher, why he did it I do not know, was it an altruistic impulse to improve out lot, or did he perhaps have an unfulfilled yearning to be a shop keeper, or were we unknowingly funding supplies in the Staff Room? Fruit Salads and Black Jacks cost pennies so I doubt we were funding anything remotely lavish.
I recall standing in the queue with my pennies in my closed fist, rehearsing to myself what I was going to ask for. He used to take the opportunity to make you do mental arithmetic when you payed but as I was unwilling to receive any education at break time I ensured I knew exactly what I wanted and how much it cost. At Middle School we moved when the bell rang, we learned what we were told to learn, and we wore a school uniform that was as utilitarian and depressing as the modernist blocks of the school buildings. That blazer was several sizes too big for me on my first day at school and several sizes too small when I left. I think there was a week sometime in the second year when it fit, but by then the black material of some synthetic manufacture had frayed grey and having passed through a washing machine several times had lost any remote pretence to the manufactured form that it once had. So when I stood in the Tuck Shop queue by my own choice, ready to make a purchase of my own design, with money I had somehow accrued, I felt like I might be a person rather than a pupil.
Once the transaction was complete I deposited the sweets in the inside pocket of my blazer and did not get them out until the bus journey home. This was a risky strategy as there was a chance they may be taken from me by a more belligerent student willing to offer menaces, but I liked to have them in my pocket during afternoon lessons as a sort of deposit on the freedom that would be gained by the final bell of the day, and anyway, not being belligerent or large I quickly learnt to be cunning and quiet.
I am no longer that child, but he is still with me.
I sometimes buy Fruit Salads and Black Jacks out of respect to him, especially as I have both more freedom and pennies now. I have to say I don’t much like Fruit Salads and Black Jacks anymore, they taste like rubbery sugared plastic with added chemicals, but what they taste of most is the bus home and that makes me smile. I would still rather move on the impulse of my day dreams than on the biding of the bell.
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